Topic: Faith

“If the unredeemed are not, at some level, objects of moral concern, possessing independent integrity and rights, then faith itself becomes morally untenable.”

Crisis and Covenant p. 41

“Faith is not certainty but the courage to live with and for God in the presence of uncertainty and to hear the voice of God even in the heart of the whirlwind.”

Crisis and Covenant p. 258

“For Judaism, the search for religious certainty through science or metaphysics is not merely fallacious but ultimately pagan. To suppose that God is scientifically provable is to identify God with what is observable, and this for Judaism is idolatry.”

The Persistence of Faith p. 57

“Faith is not measured by acts of worship alone. It exists in the relationships we create and it lies deep in our moral commitments.”

Faith in the Future p. 2

“Faith is the space where God and humanity touch.”

Faith in the Future p. 7

“There is such a thing as an ecology of hope, and it lies in restoring to our culture a sense of family, community and religious faith… If Judaism and the history of the Jewish people have a message for our time, it is surely this. Faith in the future changes lives and rebuilds the ruins of Jerusalem.”

Celebrating Life p. 9

“Faith is not a complex set of theological propositions. It is simpler and deeper than that. It is about not taking things for granted. It is a sustained discipline of meditation on the miracle of being.”

Celebrating Life p. 21

“The majesty of faith is that it teaches us to see what exists, not merely what catches our attention.”

Celebrating Life p. 58

“Faith is about the dignity of the personal and it can never be obsolete.”

Celebrating Life p. 61

“Faith is what redeems us from loneliness and humanizes the world.”

Celebrating Life p. 82

“The problem of faith is not God but mankind. The central task of religion is to create an opening in the soul.”

Celebrating Life p. 83

“Faith is the space we create for God”

Celebrating Life p. 83

“Faith is not certainty. It is the courage to live with uncertainty. It is not knowing all the answers.”

Celebrating Life p. 89

“Faith is the ability to face the future knowing that we are loved and, being loved, find the power to love in return. Faith is a marriage; marriage is an act of faith.”

Celebrating Life p. 189

“Faith is not about optimism but about courage, the courage to face an unknown future knowing that we are not alone, that God is with us, lifting us when we fall, signalling the way.”

Celebrating Life p. 176

“When Jews speak of life, they do so amidst memories of death. That is why, for me, faith is no simple, naïve, optimistic affirmation. It needs enormous strength, emotional and intellectual, to have faith in the human story.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 54

“Faith is born not in the answer but in the question, not in harmony but in dissonance.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 55

“For Judaism, faith is cognitive dissonance, the discord between the world that is and the world as it ought to be.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 70

“Jewish faith is the supreme expression of reality as it responds to and affirms the personal.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 91

“The faith of Israel declares the oneness of God and the plurality of man.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 97

“Faith is the call to human responsibility”

Radical Then, Radical Now pgs. 98-99

“It is precisely those who challenge most strongly who are the great exemplars of faith”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 165

“On Shabbat we live creation. Learning Torah we live revelation. Performing acts of hessed, covenantal love, we live redemption. We do not philosophize about these things, we enact them. Jewish faith is not primarily about creeds or theologies; it is not faith thought, but faith lived.”

Radical Then, Radical Now pgs. 165-166

“Faith is neither rational nor irrational. It is the courage to make a commitment to an Other, human or divine. It is the determination to turn ought into is. It is the willingness to listen to a voice not my own, and through hearing, find the strength to heal a fractured world. It is truth made real by how I live.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 182

“Jewish faith is not about believing the world to be other than it is. It is not about ignoring the evil, the darkness and the pain. It is about courage, endurance and the capacity to hold fast to ideals even then they are ignored by others. It is the ability to see the world for what it is and yet still believe that it could be different. It is about not giving up, not letting go.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 206

“There are other cultures, other civilizations, other peoples, other faiths. Each has contributed something unique to the total experience of mankind. Each, from its own vantage point, has been chosen. But this is ours. This is our faith, our people, our heritage.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 214

“Jewish faith is not a metaphysical wager, a leap into the improbable. It is the courage to see the world as it is, without the comfort of myth or the self-pity of despair, knowing that the evil, cruelty and injustice it contains are neither inevitable nor meaningless but instead a call to human responsibility - a call emanating from the heart of existence itself.”

The Dignity of Difference p. 190

“The duty I owe my ancestors who died because of their faith is to build a world in which people no longer die because of their faith.”

The Chief Rabbi’s Haggadah (Essays) p. 130

“Faith is a form of attention. It is a sustained meditation on the miraculousness of what is, because it might not have been.”

From Optimism to Hope p. 66

“Faith doesn’t mean living with certainty. Faith is the courage to live with uncertainty, knowing that God is with us on that tough but necessary journey to a world that honours life and treasures peace.”

From Optimism to Hope p. 72

“Faith isn’t certainty. It’s the courage the live and even celebrate in the very heart of uncertainty, knowing that God is with us, giving us the strength to meet any challenge that undiscovered country called tomorrow may bring.”

To Heal a Fractured World p. 27

“In Judaism, faith is not acceptance but protest, against the world that is, in the name of the world that is not yet but ought to be. Faith lies not in the answer but the question – and the greater the human being, the more intense the question.”

To Heal a Fractured World p. 199

“Faith does not mean certainty. It means the courage to live with uncertainty. It does not mean having the answers, it means having the courage to ask the questions and not let go of God, as he does not let go of us. It means realising that God creates divine justice but only we, acting in accord with his word, can create human justice – and our very existence means that this is what God wants us to do.”

To Heal a Fractured World p. 224

“Faith is the refusal to let go until you have turned suffering into a blessing.”

To Heal a Fractured World p. 249

“If I were to sum up what faith asks us to be, I would say: a healing presence.”

Future Tense p. 10

“The antidote to fear is faith, a faith that knows the dangers but never loses hope.”

Future Tense p. 69

“Leave faith out of the Jewish equation and what is left is a body without a soul.”

Future Tense p. 3

“Jews kept faith alive. Faith kept the Jewish people alive.”

Future Tense p. 69

“It was as a faith that Jews were born as a people, and it is as a faith that Jews survive as a people. Leave faith out of the Jewish equation and what is left is a body without a soul.”

“Our task is to be true to our faith and a blessing to others, regardless of their faith”

The Great Partnership p. 15

“Faith begins with the search for meaning, because it is the discovery of meaning that creates human freedom and dignity. Finding God’s freedom, we discover our own.”

The Great Partnership p. 172

“Faith lives, breathes and has its being in the world of relationships, in the respect we pay our marriage partner, the steadfastness with which we bring up our children, and the way we extend the feeling of family to embrace neighbours and strangers in acts of hospitality and kindness.”

The Great Partnership p. 247

“Belief in God is an assertion of human dignity in the face of humiliation, and of hope in the midst of the dark night of despair. It is a refusal to accept evil as inevitable, but at the same time an acknowledgement that we cannot leave redemption entirely to God.”

The Great Partnership p. 283

“Faith is the defeat of probability by the power of possibility.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 23

“Judaism is a supreme expression of religion as freedom, and hence of the priority of faith over fate”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 116

“At Sinai, the Israelites were transformed from a community of fate into a community of faith, from an am to an edah, meaning a body of politic under the sovereignty of God, whose written constitution was the Torah.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 116

“In the transition from exodus to Sinai, from am to edah, Jewish identity itself is transformed from passive to active, from fate to faith, from a people defined by what happens to it to a people defined by the social order they are called on to create.”

Future Tense p. 30

“Jews are a people of faith, not fate alone. Jews are choosers, not victims; co-authors of their destiny, not swept by the winds of circumstance.”

Future Tense p. 38

“Without the covenant of faith, there is no covenant of fate. Without religion, there is no global nation.”

Future Tense p. 47

“The Jewish people exists in all its bewildering complexity because it is both a religion and a nation, a faith and a fate. Remove either element and it will fall apart.”

Future Tense pp. 29-30

“The definition of Jews as the people-that-dwells-alone does great harm to Jewish peoplehood. Essentially it defines Jews as victims. It says that Jews are the people who, historically, have been subject to persecution, isolation and alienation…This is the wrong way to think of Jewish peoplehood. Jews are a people of faith, not fate alone. Jews are choosers, not victims; co-authors of their destiny, not swept by the winds of circumstance.”